February 25, 2016

A Monday Evening Visit to Uncle Vanya

Robert
Icke, Associate Director at the Almeida Theatre, returns off the back of his Oresteia West End success with a
reworking of Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya.
This production is not for the faint of heart, but rather for the seasoned theatregoer
who appreciates a natural progression of events. Uncle Vanya’s aim is not to sugarcoat life, but to highlight the complexities
of it – warts and all. The play spans three hours and 20 minutes, with three
10-minute intervals, so make sure you’re in it for the long haul.

What I
love about the Almeida is that, each time I visit, it sheds its skin to adopt a
new one even more glorious than the last. Each show comes with its own unique
stage assembly and I thought I was seeing things when I first set eyes on the Uncle Vanya setup. The cast is encased
in a wooden frame, shaped into the bare bones of a 3D cube. Once my eyes had
adjusted, I realized that the structure was in fact moving, albeit slowly. As someone on the outside looking in, as if
at caged zoo animals, there is nowhere for the actors to hide. The stage places
everyone in the limelight at one point or another, before it rotates to obscure
some, whilst exposing others.

Elena (Vanessa Kirby) lives in a state of perpetual boredom, photo courtesy of Manuel Harlan

The reworked
play’s central plotline hints at the subtle interactions that occur amongst
individuals. Alexander, a well-established professor in the city, retreats to
his countryside estate with his much younger and lust-worthy second wife,
Elena. Through maintaining the estate, John (the brother of Alexander’s late
first wife) and Sonya (Alexander’s daughter from his first wife) keep Alexander
and Elena in the lifestyle they have grown accustomed to.

John and
Michael, Alexander’s doctor, become enamored with Elena, whose exquisite beauty
and vapid personality makes for a deadly combination. Meanwhile, little Sonya
loves Michael from afar, hiding in the shadows while she’s outshone by her
stepmother’s looks. The crux of the play arrives when Alexander suggests
selling the estate for Elena’s and his own monetary gain, a declaration that
unhinges John to startling proportions.

For a
Monday night, Uncle Vanya certainly
provided some heavy introspective viewing, but that’s Chekhov for you. With
themes of stifling boredom and a “youth is wasted on the young” undercurrent,
the audience is prone to agree with Michael’s sentiment: “Life is boring.” Amongst
the highs and the lows of day-to-day living, there exists a resting
equilibrium, which could be described as the monotony of life. Icke’s Uncle Vanya captures that in a
painstaking commentary about the cynicism of human nature.

The sad,
hollow characters of Uncle Vanya seem
to be stuck in limbo – merely surviving, rather than living. For instance,
Sonya pleads with Elena, “Don’t be bored; it’s contagious.” It’s precisely that
notion of boredom as contagion that floods the play. Elena manages to sap the
life out of everyone around her, while not really having anything interesting
to say while doing it. The soliloquys reveal a lot about the internal states of
the characters. The conclusion? Perhaps it’s better not to think and not to
philosophize with an intellectual mind. It can only lead to unsatisfactory
ruminations, and thus, an unsatisfactory life.

My
favorite philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre, penned “Hell is other people” in his
existentialist play, No Exit, which
isan absolutely enlightening read.
Rather than being a physical place, Sartre suggests that hell is a metaphysical place. There’s only one word to describe being trapped in a room with vacuous, unbearable people complaining
about inane, petty things, and that’s hell. Uncle
Vanya perfectly embodies this idea for me. Not only are the characters
tired of one another, but it’s also tiring as hell to watch them in their
restless and perpetually unhappy states – ceaselessly pacing, pacing, pacing.

To quote another
philosopher, Albert Camus: “There is but one truly serious philosophical
problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living
amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.” Paul Rhys as John (our modern-day
Uncle Vanya) certainly grapples with this rather bleak ultimatum. He deteriorates
beautifully throughout the course of the play. As he teeters on the brink of
exhaustion and being fed up, he bubbles over with heart-stopping vulnerability
and frailty. Just as he begins to simmer, life’s state of affairs carries on as
normal without him, as if nothing ever happened. The stage continues to move at
a sluggish rate, like life’s cycle, which stops for nothing and no one.

Uncle Vanya is running at the Almeida Theatre until
March 26th. Showings of the play are relatively sold out, but you
might still be able to grab Day Seats or returns. Check ticket availability here.